Althea Moore, Florida State University Graduate Student

Recently I went on a trip to Cedar Key, a few hours south of the Florida panhandle where I do most of my research. The coastline there looks very different from what I’m used to. Instead of a grassy marsh, the edge of the water in this area is dominated by intertidal black mangrove trees (Avicennia germinans), with small areas of marsh scattered around the trees. I was there collecting dirt for my new experiment. You might be wondering at this point why I would go all that way just to collect dirt?

Well, the dirt itself is home to a community of tiny microbes like fungi and bacteria that interact with plants and can help them grow. I am studying how these microbes may help mangroves get started as seedlings. Check out my project, featuring some footage of my trip to Cedar Key. My site is part of an innovative ‘crowd funding’ project called SciFund Challenge that helps scientists raise money for research while also reaching out to the public. This type of science funding is a fairly new concept, at least to me.

After a peer review process, I posted my project on the RocketHub SciFund Challenge website, which is an exchange (not a charity) where people ‘fuel’ my project in exchange for ‘rewards’ like naming rights to one of my mangrove seedlings. The funds I raise through the website are treated as a gift to FSU but are still slated for my project. So far it has been fun and interesting to share my research with a broader audience. I’ve already met my minimum goal, but the more I raise, the more microbes I’ll be able to analyze and the more I’ll be able to understand about marsh and mangrove ecosystems. Feel free to stop by my site, watch the video, and track my progress!

In the Grass, On the Reef is funded by the National Science Foundation.